


The Small Empress

by blodynbach



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 05:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2098152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blodynbach/pseuds/blodynbach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time the Outsider came to Emily, it had been through the gloom of a bedroom at night. He’d asked her things like whether she liked paddling in the sea, how she felt about icicles, did she believe tyrannicide was a reasonable route in order to secure a rightful throne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Hound Pits

 

I.

 The first time the Outsider came to Emily, it had been through the gloom of a bedroom at night. He’d asked her things like whether she liked paddling in the sea, how she felt about icicles, did she believe tyrannicide was a reasonable route in order to secure a rightful throne.

 She’d told Callista the next day, and the governess gave her a new lamp. It sent up little embers amidst thin smoke, like fireflies, and made the shadows seem even longer.

 

II.

 The void had stunk of dirty ice, of the slush which gathered on walkways in the month of songs and was swept away by frostbitten guardsmen come morn. It was an old, unwanted kind of cold, and seemed to eat her flesh all over; unpleasant nips tugging hairs upright. Emily wished she’d brought a coat. The white fur one of her mother’s that had been so thick that as a child she could roll up and be consumed by Tyvian wolves. In it, she’d been a wild ice witch of the north, and fearless.

 An ice witch would not be daunted by the black-eyed god sitting at a table in the middle of nothing, asking if she’d like some cake.

 “No,” Emily replied slowly; memories of a Morley guardsman’s tales clinging. “If you eat fairy food, then you can never leave.” The Outsider laughed and told her that he hadn’t heard that one in a long time.

 “I wouldn’t care to keep you here, Emily,” the Outsider said, “Do you know why?”

 “Because I’m Empress,” she said. “Or I will be. Corvo’s told me he’s almost done.”

 “Mm,” the Outsider agreed. “He tells me much the same. I do wonder if he’s to be proven right…” He stood, pushing the plate of uneaten cake back. “Walk with me now.”

 The hand he held out was thin and bony, with flesh like river clay. Emily took it.

 

III.

 His appearance was always like rain down the back of the neck, and Emily knew he had been watching since breakfast. He hadn’t said much, just paced a little over the uneven floorboards of her tower, remarking that her art was coming along well. _Very well indeed._

“Who are you drawing this for?” he asked, and she said nobody.

 “Lie to me, little empress, and you’ll find your tongue will blacken and drop out,” the Outsider remarked, “Did your Morley guardsman not teach you that old tale too?”

 “It’s for Dr Sokolov.”

 The Outsider peered over her shoulder, his mouth twisting downwards as though disapproving. The picture was of a pack of ice hounds baying out in the snow wastes of Tamarak, their black noses pressed to the floor as they scented a trail of a travellers heading towards freezing cities. Sokolov had given the empress a book on the wildlife of his native isle for her birthday that week, and just yesterday she had finished the last chapter. She had used pastels to colour, and the Outsider outstretched one of those clammy hands of his.

 “Don’t touch it!” Emily snapped, “You’ll leave grease-marks and it’ll smudge!”

 “Oh will it?” the Outsider mocked, “And what a _tragedy_ that would be; poor Sokolov deprived of another work he cannot fathom and this one composed by a child. I wouldn’t bother.” His apathetic mood had soured, and Emily became irritated.

 “Well, who do you think I should I give it to? _Corvo_?”

 “Corvo is many things, my darling, but an appreciator of Tyvian ice hounds is not one of them. Give it to _me_.”

 “It drew it for _Anton_ ,” Emily said crossly, “Not you, so _no_.”

 A frightful look came over the Outsider’s face then, eerily akin to the blizzard she had just begun to colour. It was hostile and horrible and tickled the marrow in her bones with frost; his eyes reflecting neither the sunshine of the day nor her own art-smeared face.

 He was there when she gave Anton the portrait, muttering dark things into her ear. He said he’d bring the ice hounds to life and have them eat the physician in his sleep. They would run through his head, screaming and baying, and Sokolov would have nightmares for the rest of the year; leaving him too _frightened_ to ever return home again.

 Emily said that he was a bully and a liar, and the Outsider didn’t visit for the rest of the month.


	2. After the Tower

I. 


 With the Lord Regent dead, Emily Kaldwin’s court was happy for a day. A night.

 Emily had sat up waiting at the window for the lights of Samuel’s _Amaranth_ to glide up the Wrenhaven, the shutters open for the first time in a long time. She had closed them after the first week in the room because at night voices and sounds would float up from the river; little poems and songs and the grinding of teeth. Samuel had told her he’d seen faces on the water, and she knew this must be them speaking. Him speaking.

 The river was so still on the night the Lord Regent died though, and Emily was able to pick out dragonflies and damsels whipping bejewelled tails about the sparse clumps of weeds. Deciding the Outsider must be asleep, she risked sneaking out of her room to wait on the riverbank, bringing Sokolov’s book _Music in Mathematics_. She’d borrowed it thinking that if she could replicate the noises from the Overseers’ machines, then somehow she could record it on her audiograph and play it whilst she slept to keep him back. It made her feel quite the natural philosopher to pursue the problem in such a logical manner, but so far the book had proven very complex. Overseer Elden didn’t seem to think explaining the right notes to punch was reasonable; he’d rather trace the source of his inspiration back to red cliff carvings in Pandyssia, and insist that this wasn’t heretical in the least.

 A humming up-river caught Emily’s ear.

 “It’s not them,” the Outsider said, and she closed the book with a snap.

 His expression was derisive; “You’ll find nothing of use in Sokolov’s library, I assure you. Though your project interests me.”

 “I don’t want to interest you,” her lip jutted out sullenly, and she forgot to remind herself not to be a child.

 “Perhaps you’ll grow out of it,” the Outsider replied, and took the book away. Emily hoped he wouldn’t throw it into the river.

 “What does the music do?” Emily asked after a pause. “Can it really kill a witch?”

 “You think so much of witches,” a whisper of a smile played about the Outsider’s mouth. “Most of them are only women and girls. They all still have to brush their hair.”

 A light flashed over the water and the insects scattered. A bumbling hum rose, disturbing the still night.

 “It’s them,” she whispered, unable to see past the glare of the boat’s lantern. “Isn’t it?”

 “It is,” he replied, “I’d advise you not to look.”

 Emily did not appreciate being belittled. “I know what happens,” she stood, hands on hips, mud on white trousers, “I know what Corvo _does_. I’m not a child.”

 “Ten years old,” he said, “And clever. But a child still.”

 “You can’t be a ruler _and_ a child.”

 “Yes you can,” the Outsider rebuked. “The wolf queen of Tyvia was twelve. And the central Pandyssian province has had four boy kings this decade alone.”

 “If they’ve had four this decade, then they’re not doing very well,” Emily said.

 “No. Poison is very popular this season,” his eyes glittered, and he went on; “Although the wolf queen lasted a few winters until the Alexin Uprising. Instigated by your grandfather, I believe.”

 “Well, there will be no uprisings against me,” Emily said quietly. “They will love me.”

 The Outsider did not reply, his gaze moving as the boat’s path began to curl inwards. He pointed, and Emily followed his finger; her breath dragged savagely inward as in the sun’s dead light the Wrenhaven lapping her feet curdled the colour of blood. The figures sitting in the boat became silhouettes, like shadows turned solid, and Emily fell back down into the bloody river when the first man stepped out.

 Corvo looked like walking death.

     

II. 


 Callista had been cross that night, and the night after that she’d been dead.

 Emily had gotten herself into a fuss over the dirt on her clothes; the river muck kept glistening red and stinking sweet whenever she turned, and the panic she’d felt at the sight of Corvo’s mask clung as Callista ran her bath. A fresh suit, cream trimmed in blue, lay over the chair as the taps ran hot. Eyes closed whilst bathing for fear that she might catch sight of something in the water. Poison or faces or blood or bone or god. She’d avoided looking at Corvo all night too; colouring in the corner, quiet at the hour of her triumph.

 The Outsider had sat on the bench beside her, and when Emily had paused, he suggested she draw each of the Loyalists she could see. Piero skulking in the doorway, Callista with-a-sherry lectured by Martin with-an-ale. Pendleton adding drink to his drink, Havelock shaking Corvo’s hand, Samuel breaking bread with Lydia. Cecelia sat at the furthest table, alone but for her brush and beer. She manufactured a smile for each of them, leaving out the uninvited guest at her side.

 The drawing lived in her pocket for two weeks, folded over thrice, pressed against her chest when the boat to the lighthouse rocked; when the sea spat. The paper creased, the colours blurred, and when she took it out to look, Emily Kaldwin found her Loyalists had begun to wander off the page.

     

III. 


 The admiral had had a plan to drag the two of them into the history books. She would be a martyr, and his figurative fall would become literal, and his hands locked around her wrists like seaweed as the rocking storm voiced its disapproval. Lightning licked the great grey Wrenhaven; the gaping maw gnashing with thick black teeth. Rocks. Rocks to smash skulls.

 Emily pulled back, but he was a huge man, worse still he was desperate and mad. She shouted over the whipping licking hurricane that Corvo was going to kill him.

 He said that Corvo was the worst.

 She said that Corvo was her friend.

 She felt the drawing dig and dig.

 It felt clammy like the Outsider, hard like those nasty rocks.

 “ _Corvo_!” Emily screamed as her _protector_ shot out of the banging black doorway at the end of the iron tongue, and she felt electric fear ripple through the admiral’s body. Corvo didn’t look like Corvo, he looked like death again, and he was coming, running, running towards her as he always should be there to save. Save her. Save me.

 Then he slipped.

 Emily felt herself cease at the stumble; at the black boot gliding across the rain-slick walkway and Corvo’s hands shooting out to grasp the barrier which simply wasn’t _there_. Where he’d been a walking horror, grim reaper coming, death’s drum drumming, now he was a man. The admiral’s bullet made him dead, caught him in a flail. The chest. The heart. A fat red flower bloomed deep over his body, and Corvo’s face slackened. 

 “ _CORVO!”_ Emily shrieked, her tiny body trembling and quivering and gaping, because what. what now. what. The admiral didn’t seem to know either, hadn’t seemed to _get it_ ; that he’d killed Corvo Attano. Where pride and happiness should have met, he was a stranger to both; no relief at having spared his own threatened life. He hung to the gun in hand like a fool. An idiotic rigid statue. Farley had wanted to die then. By Corvo. Under his sickle. That would have been. Fine. Respectable. You could not beat a man of black magic. A man of god. You could not beat. Corvo. Corvo.

 Havelock’s grip on Emily’s small wrist was slack as shock rooted him, and Emily’s tight heart thump thumped. Rain wrapped her face, coating her eyes and hair and tongue like the madness of Pandyssia and the storm still hadn’t stopped. Where the world should have ceased as the bullet went pop, it raged. Still. It was all still here.

 And Emily bit the hand. Neat little milk teeth savaged Farley Havelock’s sea-scarred fingers, until he pulled away with a yelp, stepped back with a stumble into a space which wasn’t quite there. Falling, he grasped. At life and at her, and Emily recoiled; hands shooting out to shove, to smack back right in the huge square chest until the man toppled all the way over the edge. All the way down to the sea, swallowed by a thirsty black mouth. The fall had been long, and hard, and Emily would have looked but for the blinding of the sideways rain.

 She heard the sounds though. The crunching and the tumble, the smash and the great crack, and Emily knew then that that was not the way for an Empress to go.


	3. Emily Kaldwin the First

O. 


She had spent hours clinging to the top of the lighthouse, highest point in the world, shivering and slick with rain; frozen and too fretful to descend. She would have come down for Samuel, the man was like wool or bread; comforting and soft. He’d not condemn her. He’d call her Lady Emily and take her into the _Amaranth_ with a blanket over her knees, cigar smoke blowing back in the storm. Tell a boring story.

But he did not, and it was a guardsman with spots and skin-grease helped her down. Down the stairs, held in arms. He flinched at the touch of her skin; heard him say to a fellow man ‘Empress’ eyes gone queer’. Queer how, he didn’t say. Didn’t say black. Emily hoped it wasn’t that. She couldn’t rule with black eyes.

She couldn’t rule anyway.

 

I. 


They called her dark queen, witch queen, quite-the-little-bitch queen. They being the common: how they loathed the sight of her. The clean white girl, the not-yet-woman robed up so pure as though to show off her cleanliness. Emily Kaldwin the First had fled Gristol following the death of her mother, you see, because she didn’t ascribe to the Navy law saying a captain must go down with his ship. She ascribed to law of self-before-state, she ascribed to keeping the poor poor whilst on coronation day had Pandyssian blood-diamonds plaited into her circlet. She believed in protection of the aristocracy as all before her had: that was why wages were no higher, despite the double demand of work, what with so many labourers being dead. Poor were precious now, you see, because whilst the aristocracy holed up and lasted out, we died in our _thousands_. They still need us to scrub their floors, but there aren’t so many that they can throw us out in the street with another wretch popping up to take our place. No longer are we rats; we’re more valuable than the diamonds in our fair Lady’s hair! So it’s our turn to tear them out! To tear her out! To tear!

Or so the common said.

The people of her empirical court were not much better; more slippery than the Outsider, they sought to undermine her. He’d told her that, but she knew. How could she not see it in the way they danced about the truth as they spoke it? A little of ‘the city is recovering _wonderfully!_ ” and ‘oh yes, Bundry Rothwild was a pillar throughout the rat plague, might my Empress consider re-instating given honorifics, not as a reward, but as a mark of _appreciation?_ ’ Lord Rothwild had celebrated lavishly, and denied his workers a return to pre-plague pay. Emily had had to force the issue for fear of rioting, and so had sewn a ripe seed of mistrust amongst the moneyed folk. _Emily Kaldwin’s a pauper-lover, painted green as a Morley-Independence Flag._ She’s her mother two times over, Outsider alone knows what she’ll do to us. Doesn’t she know that the aristocracy **carried** Dunwall through the plague? Doesn’t she know what she owes us? And giving that Butcher a title, laudable! The man’s blood is black with the gutter; is this Kaldwin’s grand vision, to bring the filth of the street up in the world, as long as they can pay? What is she, a second plague?

Or so the nobles said.

It was difficult to pay them heed, as she sat on her white throne, head propped up on one hand as they came before her and griped. The Tower was still an ashen beacon on the interior: the Lord Regent’s marble stone couldn’t be ripped out for fear of public outcry at her pointless spending. The budget was kept in place by ten coin as it was, but in keeping the place so bright pale, she reinforced what the common thought of her.

Ever apathetic when the nobles wrung their hands, one ear pricked to the words of the Outsider. The god would lean over her shoulder and drip salt on her throne, and she’d wave the nobles away as he told her that, somewhere in Tyvia, there had been a blizzard blowing for a thousand years, and it would reign for a thousand more.

 

II. 


It had been the Overseers that were her undoing. They had the ear of the nobles, and the faith of the common. And behind gold masks, they watched. It was an Overseer who first noticed her shadow walked out of step, an Overseer who accompanied her to Whitecliff and saw that Emily Kaldwin struggled to traverse the running water where streams crisscrossed the bogs. He wrote in a red book that the empress smelled of salt, so far from the sea, and that her hand was often damp. Like clay. He told his congregation, and they buzzed like flies at the news.

Taking a woman for a Royal Protector worsened the matter. She should have been at least from another Isle, to tighten the bonds of Empire, but Emily Kaldwin picked a thorny woman raised in Pottershead. Ex-Brigmore, although that was kept quiet, and every morning her new Royal Protector would rub her hair with fresh herbs before brushing it through. The Outsider would watch in mirror, and ask if she thought her actions wise.

“I think them actions,” Emily said, raising her chin in defiance. She would not be hemmed in by advisors and prudence as her mother had been. She would rule.

The Outsider did not reply, and Rosemary the once-witch continued to comb her hair. Emily was used to the Outsider now, but she never liked it when he grew very still, and very quiet. She prompted him, and asked if he was seeing anyone at the moment. Besides her.

“I am seeing all my chosen always, because I am always,” the Outsider’s reply came.

“Comments like that make you sound conceited.”

“Gods are beyond arrogance.”

The young empress stared, hard, and a ripple of amusement passed over the Outsider’s face. As though he’d read her impudence in her thoughts, before she spoke it. She did so anyway. “Gods are beyond nothing but death, and even that will come.”

“And what are empresses beyond?” the Outsider was enjoying himself now, she could tell, sitting up with shining eyes. His hands gestured. “Why do you call my certainty hubris, when yours goes by ‘Divine Right’? Surely if anyone gets to be divine, it’s I. The God in the Room.”

“You can be divine,” Emily said firmly. “But I get to rule.”

“Emily the Wise indeed,” the Outsider said, and Emily turned away, catching his smile only in the corner of her eye. There, the gentle expression shifted from the glimpse of even milk-teeth to the great gape of a riverbed. Teeth grew too numerous for the Outsider’s mouth and jostled, splintering and eel-like, overflowing their font so as the god was unable to properly close his mouth, and his grin grew huge. It was as though he’d attempted to swallow a hundred icebergs, or a thousand seamstresses’ needles, and they’d stuck. Emily whipped her head back, and under the full-force of her gaze, the monstrous smile receded to a benign smirk.

“Y-yes,” she agreed, head forward as Rosemary lowered the Kaldwin Diadem over her charge’s determined dark brow. It gleamed. Brighter than god teeth. “That is what they will call me.”

 

III. 


Dunwall Tower fallen at the cusp of her 15th summer.

The common had risen up, and her nobles had fled, and they had chanted that she was a witch and must be burned. The Overseers agreed, and at the Feast of Painted Kettles the fourth High Overseer of her reign was elected with a promise to blot out every witch in the land. It was a charge he took so seriously that in his first announcement he condemned her for a heretic. They smashed her mother’s gazebo as the ground where Corvo had called upon the Outsider, with not a thought that once her mother had stood there, watching the boats sailing in, and that gulls had flown overhead. Corvo had played and Emily had hid, but for the people of Gristol, the place was sacrilege. Perhaps they were right.

She shed the name Kaldwin, escaped up-river in a loyal boat. She did not look for Samuel on the Wrenhaven, but saw the things he had told her of it. She saw the cove where his cousin had smuggled Serkonan tobacco, the lights in the undertow, the glistening faces where the thick strong current looped over. Emily looked as hard as she could, and the city behind her grew small, and smoke filled the night sky. It was that which stung her eyes.

Landing nowhere, she travelled for a bit. Slept with sad sailor girls in Morley. Anointed herself with rosewater the next day, collected locks of their hair tied up with thyme. She’d make them luck, and sometimes they’d leave on a boat with her and her coven would swell a bit. The Outsider invited her to Pandyssia, and was declined. Emily Not-Kaldwin wanted to know the rivers of the Isles like the back of her hand, she wanted to know the sea, and she wanted to sing to it like the sea-witches of old. Sometimes she’d attack the navy, and they gave her a new name which was not as good as Emily the Wise, but close. The Outsider asked if she meant to rule an empire of witches, and she replied she did not know. But Emily knew she must rule something. It was what she had been born to do.


End file.
